A team racing an AMC product will bring a smile to the faces of even the most jaded 24 Hours of LeMons fan, but what if you want to leave everyone in the paddock reeling back in awe from your racing machine? In that case, you’ll need to build something extreme. Say, a Ford pickup cab and bed mounted on a Crown Victoria chassis. Backwards.

Most of the time, LeMons HQ gets a bit more advance notice when something like this is being readied for a race. In the case of the 2010 Laissez Les Crapheaps Roulez race in Louisiana, however, our first hint that something different was going on came when we noticed the odd rear-wheel alignment on this trailered F-150. What the . . . ?

The truck showed up fairly late in the pre-race inspection process, and team captain Nick seemed to be all by himself. Where’s the rest of the crew that built this thing?

It turned out that Nick had started with a full team, but that every one of his teammates had bailed on the project when it turned out to be too much work. So, Nick built everything himself, and brought his race truck to the track solo. Team Azz Backwards consisted of one very industrious and persistent man. We’d become accustomed to amazing sights at Louisiana LeMons races, ever since Team Cajun Jihad’s choreographed presentation the year before, but the Azz Backwards truck raised the bar.

Underneath the truck body, the Azz Backwards machine was a stock, very worn-out Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor. The engine was located under the “bed cover.”

The steering wheel was mounted with the driver facing the rear window of the cab. By the time we took all this in, the members of the LeMons HQ team had been rendered incapable of higher mental functions. Truly one of the greatest LeMons cars of all time, and it hadn’t even turned a lap yet.

The Azz Backwards truck needed a fair amount of work in order to pass the tech/safety inspection. Nothing too daunting for your typical LeMons team with four to eight members, but this “team” was just one man. For this team, it meant that one guy would be committed to an all-night wrenching and fabrication frenzy, all while being surrounded by the Cajun-style utter chaos that is a Louisiana LeMons paddock at night.

Nick didn’t give up, and the truck eventually roared onto the No Problem Raceway track. The sight of the Azz Backwards truck in action was disconcerting for the spectators, and profoundly disturbing for the other racers.

The truck suffered from some overheating problems, due to lack of radiator airflow, but otherwise drove reasonably well.

For his accomplishment, Team Azz Backwards took home the coveted Organizer’s Choice trophy.

The truck turned out to be surprisingly quick around the Palm Beach International Raceway road course, putting down a best lap just four seconds slower than that of the winning Ford Probe.Photo courtesy of Ron Vickers

Unfortunately, transmission woes cost the team many laps. When the checkered flag waved, the Back Seat Boys had finished 57th out of 74 entries. We haven’t seen the truck since that race, but we hear rumors that Nick is building something even wilder, a vehicle that might even outdo Speedycop’s Suzuki-powered racing pop-up camper trailer.

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